The Veiled Lady | Page 7

Bagdad merchant
was as gentle as a doe, beautiful as a star seen through the soft mists of
the morning, and of stainless virtue. Her father had ever been a loyal
subject, giving of his substance to both church and state, but there were
other things to consider, among them a spouse especially selected by a
council of High Pan-Jams, whose decision, having been approved by
their imperial master, was not only binding, but final--so final that
death awaited any one who would dare oppose it. At the feast of
Ramazan the two should wed. Yuleima might take second, third, or
fortieth place--but not first.
The young prince gritted his row of white teeth and flashed his
slumbering eyes--and they could flash--blaze sometimes--with a fire
that scorched. Yuleima would be his, unsullied in his own eyes and the
world's, or she should remain in the little white house on the brown hill
and continue to blur her beautiful eyes with the tears of her grief.
Then the favorite slave and the faithful caique-ji --the one who found
the little cove even on the darkest night--put their heads together--two
very cunning and wise heads, one black and wrinkled and the other
sun-tanned and yellow--with the result that one night a new odalisque,
a dark-skinned, black- haired houri, the exact opposite of the
fair-skinned, fair-haired Yuleima, joined the coterie in the harem of the
palace of the prince. She had been bought with a great price and
smuggled into Stamboul, the story ran, a present from a distinguished
friend of his father, little courtesies like this being common in Oriental
countries, as one would send a bottle of old Madeira from his cellar or a
choice cut of venison from his estate, such customs as is well known
being purely a matter of geography.
The chief blackamoor, a shambling, knock-kneed, round-shouldered,
swollen-paunched apology for a man, with blistered, cracked lips,
jaundiced pig eyes, and the skin of a terrapin, looked her all over,
grunted his approval, and with a side-lunge of his fat empty head,
indicated the divan which was to be hers during the years of her

imprisonment.
One night some words passed between the two over the division of
bonbons, perhaps, or whose turn it was to take afternoon tea with the
prince--it had generally been the new houri's, resulting in considerable
jealousy and consequent discord--or some trifle of that sort (Joe had
never been in a harem, and was therefore indefinite), when the
blackamoor, to punctuate his remarks, slashed the odalisque across her
thinly covered shoulders with a knout--a not uncommon mode of
enforcing discipline, so Joe assured me.
Then came the great scene of the third act-- always the place for it, so
dramatists say.
The dark-skinned houri sprang up, rose to her full height, her eyes
blazing, and facing her tormentor, cried:
"You blackguard"--a true statement--"do you know who I am?"
"Yes, perfectly; you are Yuleima, the daughter of the Bagdad
merchant."
The fourth act takes place on the outskirts of Stamboul, in a small
house surrounded by a high wall which connects with the garden of a
mosque. The exposure by the eunuch had resulted in an investigation
by the palace clique, which extended to the Bagdad merchant and his
family, who, in explanation, not only denounced her as an ungrateful
child, cursing her for her opposition to her sovereign's will, but denied
all knowledge of her whereabouts. They supposed, they pleaded, that
she had thrown herself into the Bosphorus at the loss of her lover. Then
followed the bundling up of Yuleima in the still watches of the night;
her bestowal at the bottom of a caique, her transfer to Stamboul, and
her incarceration in charge of an attendant in a deserted house
belonging to the mosque. The rumor was then set on foot that it was
unlawful to look steadily into the waters of the Bosphorus or to attempt
the salvage of any derelict body floating by.
The prince made another assault on his hair and tightened his fingers,
this time with a movement as if he was twisting them round
somebody's throat, but he made no outcry. It is hard to kick against the
pricks in some lands.
He did not believe the bow-string pillow-case and solid-shot story, but
he knew that he should never look upon her face again. What he did
believe was that she had been taken to some distant city and there sold.

For days he shut himself up in his palace. Then, having overheard a
conversation in his garden between two eunuchs--placed there for that
purpose-- he got together a few belongings, took his faithful caique-ji,
and travelled a-field. If what he had heard was true she was in or near
Damascus. Here would he go. If, after searching every